Heavy Trip

Turo (Johannes Holopainen) and his buddies Lutvonen (Samuli Jaskio), Jynkky (Antti Heikkinen) and Pasi (Max Ouaska) have been friends since childhood in their remote Northern Finnish village, but they're all misfits; they bond over creating a heavy metal band in which they do great covers of other bands' songs and which never, ever plays before a live audience. You see, Turo has crippling stage fright, though he tries to hide it from his friends. He's also in love with Mila (Minka Kuustonen), but she's taken the eye of relatively successful lounge singer Jouni (Ville Tihonen) and Turo is just too shy to say a word. Until, that is, the opportunity arises for the band to play a heavy metal festival in Norway - if they can only get there in one piece....Here you've got a head-banging road trip comedy in which everything is against our heroes but still they strive to overcome. It's in equal parts deafeningly loud, hilariously funny and actively madcap with respect to the adventures these young men find themselves stumbling into. There's even a Spinal-Tappish scene that practically outdoes Spinal Tap, which is *really* saying something. Great noisy fun!

This sentence perfectly summarizes the Finnish comedy "Heavy Trip". In some backwoods in Finland, four metalheads have been practicing other people's songs for twelve years, without having one of their own, nor have they ever performed before the audience. By chance, they encounter one of the organizers of the biggest Norwegian metal festival and give him their demo tape. On one occasion, it was convenient to frontman to lie that they were invited to participate in the festival, but then the lie spread and situation got completely out of control. The band decides to write an original song and appear at the festival uninvited, come what may. Of course, anything that can go wrong will go wrong and the guys will find themselves in the wildest adventure of their lives.

I can not say that the movie is objectively particularly good, but as a metalhead myself, I really enjoyed the ride. The story is original, and adventure is, although totally over-the-top, essentially very realistic and full of life. The humor is mostly mediocre, but there are some hilarious moments, and there's some touching drama too. The acting is good and dialogues I can not judge because I do not speak Finnish and I do not trust subtitles nearly enough to evaluate based solely on them. And of course, the metal sound is something I'm always happy to hear in the movie, even if it's a subgenre that I do not normally listen to. If you do not have too high expectations, you will surely have good fun.

7/10

This is an absolutely hilarious dark comedy of a Finnish jerkwater heavy metal band, with all the tropes and cliches of the heavy metal culture present, both defied, averted, downplayed and absolutely played straight. A brilliant example of Finnish contemporary movie culture.

This moie is about a talented but an absolutely shy and introverted heavy metal band, who after 12 years of jamming and playing together in a basement of a reindeer slaughterhouse (where one of the members work), finally wants to make the big break and aims high. And everything goes horribly right.

If you are a metalhead, LARPer or generally interested in the geek culture, this movie is a must!

So I watched the movie without any expectations and gotta be fair the movie was damn good and funny as well. Highly recommeneded for metalheads and people who just want to have a good laugh.

P.S. that was my 1st movie from Finland and I loved it. Keep up the good work metal bros and sisters.

Cheers

A funny and extremely clever satire of the Finnish and Norwegian death metal scene. You of course don't have to know anything about metal to enjoy this little gem of a movie, but if you do it's icing on the cake. If your a fan of the show metalocalypse definitely check this out. Also check it out if you are just a fan on fun indie comedies and don't mind subtitles. I don't mind subtitles, but I do feel they can hurt comedies as so much of the genre relies on the success and wittiness of the dialogue. Translations don't always carry through, and unfortunately I do feel the translations hurt this film slightly for those of us that don't speak Finnish. But the acting, and rememberable situations do speak for themselves. 7.5/10 (which is a high score for me.)